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Thursday 24 April 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Michaud, A C
(1876-1975) US author of Our Coming World (1951), a Utopia set on a Mars whose long-lived inhabitants, benefiting from a healthy socialist regime much in contrast with the terrible state of post-World War Two Earth, kidnap the crew of a B-29 bomber and teach them things it is good to know. [JC]
Two Women of the West
Joint pseudonym of Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (1846-1906) and Ella Robinson Merchant (1857-1916) for their sf Satire, Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance (1893), whose male narrator, after flying to Mars in an "aeroplane" – a very early appearance of the word in English – discovers there a Utopia based on Gender reversal (see Feminism; ...
Toner, Tom
(1986- ) UK author whose Amaranthine Spectrum sequence, comprising The Promise of the Child (2015), The Weight of the World (2017) and The Tropic of Eternity (2018), is a late but not unwelcome addition to the canon of the Widescreen Baroque Space Opera, with all the conventions typical of such a tale set in an interstellar arena, but conveyed with ...
Ausubel, Ramona
(? - ) US teacher and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Safe Passage" in One Story for 10 April 2010, her best known story being "Atria" (4 April 2011 The New Yorker), whose protagonist, mysteriously impregnated, gives birth to a seal, and soon lovingly introduces her newborn child into its element. The tale was included in her first collection, A Guide to Being Born (coll 2013). In its sudden turns and ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...